15 degrees feels refreshing. Especially after 5 months of constant 30. It’s an early spring here in Japan and it reminds me quite much the spring back home in Estonia (of course at the moment we have about -10 degrees 🙂 ). But the weather today was beautiful and the prognosis for tomorrow is even better. Our last day before heading back home :).
Warmer clothes
Before leaving Bali we did a little clothes shopping since the warmest clothes we had were basically jeans and a T-shirt. Luckily finding some jackets in Bali was not very difficult, most of the stores and markets sell them since they are also very popular among local people. In the evenings when it’s only 25 degrees many people wear them. I can actually get that. But what I couldn’t understand was that quite often we could see people during midday, when the sun was scorching down furiously, wearing long trousers, warm socks, hooded jackets, almost like winter coats, scarfs and even warm gloves. I presume that one behind this is to keep the sunlight away but I really can’t imagine how hot it must have been for them. And warm woolen socks + flips-flops is quite an interesting combination :). Finding bigger sizes can be a bit more tricky but if you dig deep enough you’ll find proper clothes. And of course if you stay away of the high-end glamorous shopping malls the prices are also extremely reasonable.
Bali airport
Bali airport looks really beautiful with it’s inside temples, gardens and pathways, they have really done a marvellous job about the looks. But on the topic of handling the masses of tourists it’s a bit lacking. In no other airport during our journey or actually anywhere else it has taken so much time to get from the airport entrance to the correct gate. There is a first x-ray security check where you have to put all your belongings through. Then there’s a passport check, then the check-in queue. After that 2 more passport/boarding ticket checks. And when you finally reach the x-ray check for your hand luggage you think it’s now a smooth run to the finish but no, there’s a huge line waiting for you to get to the final passport check where they have a look on your visa status. All in all it took us nearly about an hour and a half to go through all this so be warned to take your time. Maybe we just got there at a bad time but since there are so many tourists visiting Bali I imagine it’s the same case most of the time.
Tokyo – Narita
Our original plan was to go and see Tokyo. But to be honest we didn’t do any background research before a few weeks heading to Japan. So when we discovered that it’s almost 70km to Tokyo from the airport and getting there is quite expensive + we already have 5 months of journeying behind us we decided to leave it for another time and instead look around in a small town called Narita right near the airport. Today we went to visit the beautiful Naritasan temple and we will definitely go back there tomorrow while looking around in the area. It’s really majestic, well-maintained, covers a huge area and the admittance is totally free. There will be clips of it in the video coming about Narita :). In addition we ate authentic Japanese food (which at first tasted a bit weird but was actually pretty good) and just strolled around between our hotel and the city.
Japan compared to SE Asia is of course really expensive and it takes some time to get used to. You could get a 6-7 night stay in Bali for the same price you’ll get 1 night here in Japan. Foods and groceries are also on another level but not too expensive compared to Estonia. Either way the overall calming and polite vibe of Japan and Japanese people is really nice :).
All the best!
Lauri
